With the advent of new telecommunication systems, it can become increasingly difficult to provide power amplifiers that exhibit desired linearity characteristics. This may be particularly true for the amplifiers driving base stations in communications networks, where the network are operating as fifth generation or beyond fourth generation—long term evolution (LTE) networks.
In such applications, amplifiers that are more linear are more easily corrected using digital predistortion (DPD) techniques, further improving the amplifier's efficiency and potentially simplifying the overall amplifier implementation. A power amplifier's non-linearity can be attributed, at least in part, to a number of intrinsic nonlinearities occurring within the power transistors of the amplifier, such as variances in the transistor's gain, and gate-to-source and gate-to-drain capacitances.
One specific type of power amplifier used in wireless communication systems is a Doherty amplifier. Doherty amplifiers can be suitable for use in such applications because the amplifiers include separate amplification paths—typically a carrier path and a peaking path. The two paths are configured to operate at different classes. More particularly, the carrier amplification path typically operates in a class AB mode and the peaking amplification path is biased such that it operates in a class C mode. This can enable improved power-added efficiency and linearity of the amplifier, as compared to a balanced amplifier, at the power levels commonly encountered in wireless communications applications. However, the performance of a Doherty amplifier also may be affected by various nonlinearities occurring within the main and peaking amplification paths.